A Long Beach family is asking for the public’s help finding their brown American pit bull puppy that was stolen out of their front yard Friday afternoon.

“We are devastated. My kids have been crying,” said Angel Valadez, owner of the stolen pit bull. “It’s like they took a kid.”

Valadez said he was at work around 4:45 p.m. when his security camera captured three male individuals leaning over the gate of his home near Poly High School.

Within seconds of reaching over the gate, one of the individuals snatches his 4-month old puppy Hazel by her fur and runs off. The two other people with the individual who snatched Hazel stand by a little longer as they attempt to also take Valadez’s second dog, Chico, a year-old French bulldog.

When Chico refused to get too close to the people outside the gate, one of them jumped into Valadez’s home and chased the black dog around.

The trespasser eventually gave up and jumped back outside, with Chico seen standing his ground and barking as the individuals flee, security footage shows.

“Hazel was very lovable,” Valadez said. “That’s why she got close to them when they neared the fence.”

Shortly after Hazel was stolen, one of Valadez’s neighbors told him that he captured the three individuals getting into a red sedan, but not before trying to go back a second time to try and take Chico, security footage shows.

Thanks to his neighbor’s state-of-the-art security system, Valadez said he was able to file a police report with the Long Beach Police Department and provide a license plate number for the red sedan the individuals who took Hazel got into.

Police were not immediately available to comment on the incident and the motive remains unclear.

Valadez said this incident cuts especially deep because he had been holding off on getting a new pet due to his long-time dogs passing away. But recently, he decided to buy Hazel, and his family fell in love with the blue-eyed pit.

“It would mean everything to get the dog back,” Valadez said. “It’s family, family sticks together.”

Editor’s note: Because of a typo, a previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Hazel’s name as Hazeo.

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